The Nokia N76 has the looks to compete with the iPhone, but using it is a dissatisfying experience all around.

There's no denying that Nokia's slimmest, best-looking flip phone yet, the N76, is a powerful, unlocked smartphone. The terrible truth, though, is that this handset is dragged down by a string of design and software flaws. Its short battery life and lack of a fast wireless data connection are deeply disappointing.

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Nokia's heart and soul has always been centered on candy-bar and slider phones rather than the flip phones Americans tend to love. Even so, the N76 is an attractive example of the style favored in the States. It's a broad, flat device (4.2 by 2 by 0.6 inches, at 4.1 ounces) that looks a lot like a Motorola RAZR, with a large 1.4-inch, 160- by 128-pixel LCD screen and music control buttons on the outside of the flip. Inside, there's a big 2.4 inch, 320-by-240 color screen and a very flat metallic keypad with buttons trimmed by attractive blue text. Camera buttons on the outside of the phone let you snap photos with the flip closed, using the external screen as a viewfinder.

The phone's design issues become evident as soon as you try to open it. You can't open the N76 with one hand, because the flip closes tightly and offers nowhere to lever it open with your fingers. On the top of the phone, there's a 3.5mm stereo headphone jack. Combine that with the big front screen and the phone's syncing compatibility with Windows Media Player, and the N76 has great promise as a music phone. The headphone jack, however, blocks the flip. If you plug in headphones, you can't flip the phone all the way open. How did Nokia let that slip through the cracks?

The N76 plays AAC, MP3, and WMA music files, and takes microSD cards slipped into a slot right under the charging port on the left. But if you plug in a good pair of headphonessay, Bose Around-Ear Headphonesyou'll be irritated by a hissing sound in the background of most songs. You can't use Bluetooth stereo headphones to listen, either, because the phone doesn't support them. Music through the stereo speakers on the bottom is nice and loud, though.

The audio problems continue in phone mode. The N76 gets good reception on AT&T's and T-Mobile's EDGE networks. Since it's an unlocked, quad-band phone, you just pop in your SIM card, and you're ready to go with either of those carriers. But the handset just doesn't get very loud, which is especially a problem with the speakerphone. Transmissions from the speakerphone sound hollow, and I misdialed over and over again on the flat, nearly feedback-free keypad.

In addition, the N76's lack of 3G high-speed networking hurts the phone's main strength. Otherwise, it's a marvelously fast Symbian smartphone, with plenty of memory and the best Web browser on any phone, anywhere. The 367-MHz processor successfully revs up the Symbian Series 60 interface. In fact, JBenchmark Java benchmark-test results came out ahead of the N75, and the N75 is a relatively fast Symbian Series 60 phone.

The N76's 38MB of user memory is the same as the N75'sacceptable but not thrillingly capaciousso I added a 2GB MicroSD card for more storage. Nokia's new Feature Pack 1 adds even more features to the excellent Web browser. You get form autofill, a floating toolbar with common commands on it, and a password keeper. The N76 squeezes all it can out of EDGEI got 152 Kbps down and 60 Kbps up, positively excellent speedsbut those still pale before EV-DO or HSDPA, available on other phones.

Once you've been using the phone for a while, all that mirrored chrome starts to look really greasy. I also found the phone's two big screens and metallic keypad to be ugly fingerprint magnets. Furthermore, when outdoors, the main screen appeared very dim under its blanket of body oil.

The N76 has two cameras, but neither is very good. The VGA self-portrait camera takes watery low-res shots. The main 2-megapixel camera is fun to use, as you use the big front screen as a viewfinder, but shots are overexposed and bluish. The phone's video mode, on the other hand, is better. It takes decent 320-by-240 resolution videos at 15 frames per second. You can easily print photos to a Bluetooth printer, or send them via Bluetooth or USB to your PC or Mac.

The final nail in the coffin was battery life. The N76 uses the same 700-mAh battery as the 3G N75, whose battery life was pathetic. Because EDGE takes less power than 3G does, the N76 has more talk time, but music playback time is still stuck at 8 hours 20 minutesand I'd expect less than two days of use on a charge.

Yes, this handset looks great. But looks can't close the deal. If you're shopping for a Nokia N76, you might want to consider instead Nokia's own N73, Motorola's RAZR V3xxor, for that matter, that Apple iPhone.

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About the Author

PCMag.com's lead mobile analyst, Sascha Segan, has reviewed hundreds of smartphones, tablets and other gadgets in more than 13 years with PCMag. He's the head of our Fastest Mobile Networks project, hosts our One Cool Thing daily Web show, and writes opinions on tech and society.
Segan is also a multiple award-winning travel writer. Other than ... See Full Bio

Nokia N76

Nokia N76

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